1. Technical Field
This invention concerns a method for generating a software application that can be applied to several different target platforms, a device for generating a software application that can be applied to several different target platforms, a program module containing a software application and a data processing unit controlled by a software application.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Normally, application software is generated and encoded closely related to the respective target platform, on top of which this application will later be executed. The programmer has to take into account the application programming interface (API) of the target platform and he has to choose the platform dependent means and functional principles to implement the execution principles of his application. He has therefore for example to consider the mechanisms of the operating systems (UNIX, Windows NT, . . . ) of the target platform.
This approach has the disadvantage, that the description of the application produced by the programmer is dependent on the respective platform and can therefore not be automatically transformed to another target platform. If the application has to be executed on another platform, a totally new description of the application has to be encoded by the programmer.
Another drawback of this approach is, that the programmer requires knowledge of the platform specifics, which he cannot reuse when he has to encode programs for other target platforms.
Further, there already exist some standards and products (OMG/CORBA, . . . ) that allow an object oriented, platform independent design of application software. These standards and tools are mainly used for generating software applications that are of higher complexity, which is for example the case in the telecommunication field. In such a object oriented design description of an application the functions of the application are described by a plurality of interaction objects. If the application is implemented with a CORBA product (CORBA =Common Object Request Broker Architecture), the specification of the interaction between objects is done by means of the IDLO language. This description is translated to source code written in a programming language, which provides distribution transparency at the programming level.